Womens hair

Amen and thank you! You took the words right out of my mouth. We as followers of Christ whether Baptist or not need to get over the women should dress like this and wear this amount of hair and all that...we have to get back to the Heart of worship where its all about Him. There are 2 things we can KNOW ABOUT HIM and then we can KNOW HIM! The choice is yours whether to give up the petty little quirks or really get into the Heart of knowing HIM. Thats how I look at all of this!

 

In other words, the commands of Scripture, even the NT commands, are meaningless to you?

1 Corinthians 11:2-5 Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.

 

I am saying the length of hair does not matter. I dont have long hair, I hate myself with long hair, and I still love the Lord with all my heart. I also had cancer and lost most of my hair and still the Lord loved me and yes thats where I am getting at its all about your relationship with the Lord. The Lord is going to love you no matter what you wear, how you wear your hair, His love is unconditional. I feel bad that you sit there and judge a person's relationship with the Lord by the outward appearance because its not all about that. When I am ministering to my friends and neighbors in my complex it has been in the evenings in my sweat shorts and a t-shirt. Even when I go to church I wear jeans and a shirt its not about the outward its about coming to the heart of worship where its all about Him and our hearts not the outward so much.


And at the moment I dont have a head to my household, I am the head of my household but I have Christ leading and guiding me and without Him leading and guiding I wouldnt be getting through all I have been getting through hanging onto His garment. Not everyone gets the fairy tale life. You make do with what you are dealt with. The Lord will get you through the rest, we just have to trust Him and Hold on to Him.

 

Thread heading...

I approve of it! :thumbs:




Seriously, I sort of cringe when I hear the "women must have long hair, cause the bible says so" view. Like other issues (women speaking in church, wearing a "head covering" in church, etc) we lose sight of the "main point" when we are fixated on the "specifics" at the expense of the overall point.

That being that God wants His men to look like men, and His women to look like women.

He created them different for a reason, and He wants them to look that way.

I've seen some women with long hair who look as manly as can be, and I've seen some women with short hair who are as feminine looking as can be.

As a man, I can say that *generally* I find long hair on a woman to extremely attractive and appealing. I prefer long hair on a woman. But women with short hair can be beautiful as well.

Again, I..and many other baptists as well...believe the correct view of those passages of scripture is that they are an admonition to maintain the "feminine" vs "masculine" distinction.

And by the way, the same applies for men. I see men in church sometimes with a ponytail, or long hair on the shoulders. If they are clearly masculine in appearence its no problem imo.



:godisgood:

 

Faithman, I am not a pastor nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

I am a simple woman with short hair and I don't wear hair coverings either. I believe headship and authority are the principals being taught in these passages and we lose sight of those when we make them about outward symbols instead of inward change.

I could just as easily have long hair and wear a veil/headcovering and have a bad attitude toward my husband/head. That hair and veil are going to do nothing toward changing my heart. They might make other believe that I am a submissive wife, but it would be a lie. The best mark/outward sign of my acceptance of my husbands headship is the attitude with which I treat him.

 

I think you are all off on a needless tangent.
The Bible does not command a woman to have long hair. Here is what it says about long hair.

1 Corinthians 11:14-15 Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?
15 But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.
--Her hair is given as a glory to her.
Nature teaches that long hair for a man is a shame to him.
This is set in contrast to a woman, where nature teaches that to women long hair is not only natural, but it is her glory. It is evident that not every woman will be able to have their hair long for medical reasons or therwise. This was not a command. It was an argument that paul was using.

You must read the entire passage to see what Paul is getting at. He is not speaking about long hair, per se. He is speaking about women's head coverings, that is a hat, a veil, something she puts on top of her head. That was the command given at the beginning of the chapter.
He then proceeds to give 6 reason why women should wear a head-covering.

Look at the first few verses from the ASV

1 Corinthians 11:2 Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. KJV

1 Corinthians 11:5-6 But every woman praying or prophesying with her head unveiled dishonoreth her head; for it is one and the same thing as if she were shaven.
6 For if a woman is not veiled, let her also be shorn: but if it is a shame to a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be veiled.

The command is that the woman needs to veiled, or that her head should be covered in the church services. It has nothing to do with long hair, but the wearing of a head-covering. It is a command. Paul calls it an ordinance, a word which means a command.
In the East this command is followed to the letter of the law. Fifty years ago you would never see a lady in a church without a hat. What happened. Did our society go through a period of rebellion and never get back to biblical standards? I think that is the case. Culture does not dictate Biblical mandates. It is the other way around. If the culture is wrong, then it needs to be changed.

 

Yeah, just look at me
Seriously, though. My dad believes in headcoverings. It's a good way to lose a lot of friends and make people hate you. I'm not super submissive or anything, but I think I do just as well as anyone else.

(DISCLAIMER: We've never even initiated a conversation about why we wear them or tried to tell anyone that they needed to.)

 

Yeah, just look at me
Seriously, though. My dad believes in headcoverings. It's a good way to lose a lot of friends and make people hate you. I'm not super submissive or anything, but I think I do just as well as anyone else.

(DISCLAIMER: We've never even initiated a conversation about why we wear them or tried to tell anyone that they needed to.)

 

Two things. First, the only Christian group I've seen emphasize women wearing head coverings is the Catholics. I've never seen it in a large Protestant group.

Second, even though recent thinking suggests that Jesus had short curly hair and no beard, in the traditional picture of Jesus He has long hair and a beard. Is Paul saying here that it is a shame for a man to look like Christ?

 

Your imaginary picture of Christ is faulty.
Who gave you that picture? Leonardo Da Vinici lived in the late 1400's to the mid-1500's. He was the one who painted the Last Supper with Christ having long hair. The painting of Christ having long hair came during that period of time during the Renaissance period. But how do they know he had long hair? Did they have a Kodak photograph to work from? It was only their imagination. They had nothing. Their was nothing Biblical in their paintings that have been passed down to us. Their is nothing authoritative in either Michelangel or Da Vinci. Does their artwork supercede the teaching of the Bible. Would Christ go contrary to His own Word?
I think not!
Your thinking that Christ had long hair certainly has no Biblical basis.

 

I agree that we don't know what Christ looked like.

 

My apologies for not wading through 14 pages (been away from the 'puter a bit) so if I am repeating another, I am so sorry!

Yes, Paul did cover the issue of women's hair and heads. (Pun intended.)

The question is why?

Seems pretty obvious to me his primary concern was to spread the gospel. So going at it by insulting the local culture's sense of morality would not be a good way to start.

IN THE SAME WAY my grandma would not think of doing the jezebel thing and wearing eye makeup. In her sleepy little east texas village, she would have scandalized the folks she hoped to evangelize.

Now, today, where I live in Colorado, if a younger woman refused to wear any makeup at all she might scandalize the folks she wants to evangelize.

God looks on the motives and intents of the heart. He is, I believe, much more concerned about why we do what we do than He is about some of the nit picking over the whats.

I have a friend who wears her hair about 1/4 inch long in support of her actively lesbian daughter. Is that a sin? I would say a resounding YES as it is blatant support of a sinful choice.

But I have another friend with a painful skin condition that invaded her scalp. She wears the identical style to avoid dangerous infections. I do not believe either God or Paul would condemn that.

 

This statement is not necessarily true. In fact in most cases today it is wrong; it is used as a cop-out, an excuse for many Christians not to obey God. God does indeed look at the heart. But he also looks at whether or not you are going to obey him. He states three times in John 15 that if you don't obey his commandments you don't love him. The test of our love for Christ is our obedience to him.

John 14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
--You may be sincere, but if your sincerity doesn't translate into obedience then God isn't interested it. You will face the consequences thereof.

2 Samuel 6:6-7 And when they came to Nachon's threshingfloor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.
--David was retrieving the ark of God which had previously been in the hands of the Philistines. He had put in on a cart. The ox cart shook, and Uzzah reached forth his hand to steady it. It was an automatic reaction, a sincere desire to do good, so that the ark would not fall off the ark.
--God killed him on the spot. No one was to touch the ark, except for the Levites, and then they were to carry it a very specific way--not on an ox cart. Uzzah had good intentions. His heart was sincere. According to your theology, if God looked on the heart and saw that his motive was pure and good, no such punishment would have been forthcoming. But God didn't simply look on the heart. He demanded strict obedience, and killed Uzzah for not obeying the law no matter how sincere Uzzah was.

One cannot use the excuse "God looks on the heart" to disobey the commands of God.
Saul thought he was sincere in what he did. What did Samuel tell him.

1 Samuel 15:22-23 And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.

Saul was dethroned as king. His rebellion was the equivalent as witchcraft, and stubborness as iniquity and idolatry. But wait! What had he done? He had offerd burnt offerings and sacrifices to the Lord. He was sincere in what he had done. Why didn't the Lord accept his offerings? Why didn't he just look at the sincerity of his heart? Why? Because to obey is better than sacrifice as Samuel aptly puts it.
It is not the heart that God was looking at. It was the obedience that was lacking in Saul's life.

 

No it wasn't. Paul's primary concern was the proper decorum of believers in a Christian gathering.

That said, the rest of your post is rendered moot.

 

Just my thoughts on the whole thing: First, I'm so glad we don't live under the law anymore. I think Jesus would be disappointed that people take so much time to argue such things. He was all about doing His Father's work, and ignoring the Pharisees' legalistic rules.

I grew up in an IFB church where the pastor's wife and daughters wore head coverings. The daughters usually wore doily looking things bobby pinned to the top of their heads. The wife wore a scarf. The pastor would have liked all the women in the church to wear them, also, but that didn't happen. He was also very adamantly against women wearing pants, for any reason. His mother walked out of the service on Mother's Day when he started preaching about pants. She was obviously wearing pants.

My father was unsure about the whole thing and sought the counsel of a man in church he respected. This man explained that the head covering the women wore was more in line with what Muslim women wear today. He explained the whole concept of submission to the husband/father. My dad decided he didn't need a doily to know if we were submissive. I've never seen a woman in church wearing a Scripturally correct head covering, if she was going to wear them as the NT women did.

Oh, and all the daughters of that pastor ended up living like the world, or worse.

My husband agrees with my father. He doesn't need me to cover my short hair at church to know that I am submissive. And the people at church know me enough to know it, too.

I just find it a bit funny that the men are the ones who are adamant about this topic. And that someone defined how short they think is appropriate for men's hair.

Isn't long and short relative?

 

This is a joke. Right? Sometimes I can't tell around here.

 

1 Cor. 11 is definitely about proper decorum in worship. Not one word about evangelism.